I want to point more tanks over at Kadomi’s post from Tuesday concerning warrior ability use priority. It is a great summation of the information gleaned from this TankSpot thread. Make sure you read both the comments on Kadomi’s post and the responses to the thread, as there is significant dispute (which means time for real in game testing!)

In essence, this is all fall-out from this change in patch 3.2.0:

Devastate: Weapon damage and bonus per Sunder Armor on the target increased by 100%. This ability now requires a shield to be equipped.

This obviously shakes up some things I’ve been doing, making me revisit a few assumptions – and that’s good. Needless to say, I need to put some serious thought into what to do to here. In the interests of science then, let me share this slice of cow brain with you. Maybe it will be helpful if you are doing your own tests.

I want to try Glyph of Devastate, but I like my current glyphs of Vigilance, Heroic Strike, and Blocking. I feel like the logical choice for the swap out is Heroic Strike because I’m not precisely hurting on rage. My role lead says I need to work on my leading threat in any case, so this is probably something I should look at anyway.

If it turns out to be true that Revenge is so much lower on the priority scale, should I take that one remaining point in Improved Revenge and put it somewhere else? If so, where? Cruelty? Puncture?

I’m using a pretty fast weapon right now (1.6 Speed). If Devastate lags behind now, is there a slower weapon currently in game that would change the equation. I’m thinking the Burnished Quel’Serrar (2.0 Speed), but also potential future weapons in Icecrown. What’s the slowest speed on a 1-hander… 2.8?

Thanks to Axiom switching over to World of Logs, I have a pretty good base-line of numbers to test against. Heroic Northrend Beasts is still kicking our butts – so anything I can do to boost effectiveness my little part of helping on progression.

Any feed back from fellow tanks who have tested these changes in the field is, of course, appreciated.

There is surely a wide variety of opinion on the Avoidance vs Threat issue. If you aren’t familiar with these words as a tank, let me assure you that they are the basis for a great deal of tanking jargon. If you were seated with a bunch of tanks, having a drink, it would be perfectly expect for them to ask “So %T, Avoidance or Threat?” As if this innocent question were simply a question about underwear choice.

Oh no. This is about destiny. It is about gear choice. It’s about saying “So, whose side are you on? Are you competing for my gear? Or the Tauren’s?”